Walking with witches four centuries on in Lancashire's landscape of lost souls

Newchurch-in-Pendle is a hamlet like many others in the Lancashire countryside.

A crowded ensemble of limestone cottages, dissected with dry stone walls, it clings to the side of the steep road towards Pendle Hill.

When it’s raining – which is most of the time round here – it can look battered and forlorn.

Atmospheric: The hamlets around Pendle Hill are alive with the stories of the witches who once roamed around this countryside

But on a sunny weekend the single lane through its narrow centre is jammed with the hatchbacks of walkers and their families. These hills in East Lancashire rival the nearby Lakes and Dales as pristine hiking country.

However, Newchurch also harbours a deeper secret – one that reveals itself to walkers as they traipse up the hill towards Pendle.

Past the village noticeboard on the left and the 17th century church on the right, the road climbs severely towards a row of cottages where three old women sit bent in silence.

In a car, one might speed past them but close scrutiny reveals three life-size, papier-mache witches, with pointed hats and chins with warts. This is Pendle witch country.

These farms and hamlets might now
attract day-tripping hikers at the weekend but in 1612 they were gripped by
the largest witch hunt in English legal history. It was a sinister
episode that saw the arrest and execution of ten alleged witches and one
which still holds a peculiar fascination for tourists and locals alike.

If fields could talk: A view from Pendle Hill, whose surrounds were the backdrop to a particularly dramatic period of local history

Witches are everywhere in East
Lancashire, from the pint glasses to council literature. They’ve even
named a bus route to Manchester after them and christened each
individual bus after one of the coven.

It’s a story I know well. As a native of nearby Nelson I know there’s not a person within ten miles of Pendle who is not acquainted with at least the basic details of the witches’ story, or a pub that hasn’t heard some wild retelling of their exploits.

At university, I took my ingrained Lancastrian obsession with me and bored my history tutors rigid with a very dull and very average 15,000 word thesis on the accused and their neighbours.

Under the Lord's gaze: St Mary's Church has a carving of the 'Eye of God' on its tower

On the 400th anniversary of the
trial, witch fever is running higher than ever here. There have been
concerts, plays and lectures across the county and there are further
plans for a sculpture trail and walking tours in the shadow of Pendle
Hill.

That in mind, I
thought I’d get the train from London, arm myself with one of my Dad’s
old walking maps and revisit a familiar story.

My weekend began in Newchurch, where I visited the Witches Galore shop, a treasure trove of souvenirs, wicca spell guides and history textbooks.

Broomsticks hang by string from the ceiling of this converted cottage, all jealously guarded by the female proprietor who skulks in the shadows behind the till.

Its charms are short-lived so it’s back down the street to St Mary’s Church, consecrated in 1544, which has a closer connection to the witches’ story.

The
graveyard here is small and quiet, hidden behind a steep hill so that
even when the road outside is choked with parked cars, it remains a
sanctuary of stillness.

The
narrative of the witches essentially revolves around two large,
destitute families – the Chattoxes and the Demdikes – who traded on a
local reputation for black magic.

They dealt in spells and curses,
providing a service for their neighbours but intimidating their enemies
with threats of misfortune and death.

This was a community ill-educated in
conventional theology but gripped by superstition, so that when
magistrates came looking for religious deviants they found no shortage
of witnesses keen to see these two clans carted off to the gallows.

Toil and trouble: The story of the Pendle witches is something of a boost for the Lancashire tourism industry

At
their trial, all but one was found guilty of various crimes of
witchcraft, including murder and a plot to blow up Lancaster Castle. The
churchyard at Newchurch regularly appears on their charge sheet.

The
Demdikes lived in Newchurch itself and the family matriarch, Old
Demdike, is said to have dispatched her grandson to steal consecrated
bread from the sacred building for use in her spells.

The Chattoxes were alleged to have raided graves here and stolen the teeth of the dead. Even today the echoes of superstition still linger.

Sunk into the west tower of the
church is the ‘Eye of God’ - an elliptic of lead installed some years
after the witches’ execution to ward away evil spirits.

A
few strides into the graveyard and I come across the ‘Nutter Grave’,
for generations identified as the resting place of Alice Nutter, the
wealthiest of the Pendle witches. That myth has been debunked by
historians but suspicion still lingers that it might belong to a
descendant.

The fields around Newchurch reverberate with such stories. From nearby Faugh’s Quarry where it is claimed Demdike had a meeting with the devil, to Bull Hole Farm, the site of the murder of a local girl, allegedly at the hands of the witches, there is rarely a corner of Pendle that doesn’t have some connection – real or imagined - to the coven. But the best way to see it all, I thought, would be to climb Pendle Hill and look out across the whole of witch country.

The hill, a hulking slab of peat, moss and gritstone - 557 metres high - dominates the skyline of East Lancashire.

From the summit – 169 feet short of mountain status but unobstructed by rival hills – it should be possible on a clear day to see Blackpool Tower as well as the hamlets that crowd the hill’s base.

Climbing it was a good plan but I hadn’t counted on the Lancastrian weather.

Leaving
Newchurch in flawless sunshine, I drove the short distance to the
village of Barley wishing I had packed some sun cream. But 45 minutes
later, as I stumbled towards the trig point, I was enveloped in freezing
cloud and rain with visibility of no more than a few hundred yards amid
a blowing, howling gale.

Foreboding: A number of the Pendle witches were tried at Lancaster Castle, which also served as a prison

There was no opportunity – or inclination – for sightseeing from the summit and I scuttled back down the hill to relative calm.

Back in the pub at Barley, it felt an unsatisfying conclusion to my Pendle exploration so I endeavoured to follow the witches’ story through to its natural ending - by following their last journey through the Trough of Bowland to the castle at Lancaster.

Once described as ‘the Switzerland of England’, the Trough is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty still relatively ignored by the tourists who flock to the Lake District just a few dozen miles away.

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It is a spectacular drive through the pretty villages of Waddington and Dunsop Bridge onto the rugged tops and down into the city.

In the centre stands the castle, a working prison until recently. There is a sinister edge to the walking tour I take around its newly opened quarters.

However, it perhaps feels a more appropriate conclusion to my trip - where the witches’ journey ended, so too does my own.

Travel Facts

A guide to walking tours of Pendle can be found in Jack Keighley’s ‘Walks in Lancashire Witch Country’.The Witches Galore shop in Newchurch is open every day from 11am to 5pm (www.witchesgalore.co.uk).

Guided tours of Lancaster Castle take place seven days a week between 10.30am and 4pm, with the exception of Christmas and New Year (www.lancastercastle.com).

For more information on Pendle, visit www.visitpendle.com or ring the visitor information centre on 01282 677150.